TAGLIONE (TALION). - Use and penal law first set forth in the "Code of the Covenant" (Ex. 20:24; 23:12), where it deals with the compensation owed to the injured party in cases of assault, according to whether or not they produced personal injury. "If a misfortune follows, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise" (ibid. 21:23-25).
In Lev. 24:19-20, in a series of penal prescriptions, it is similarly said: "Whoever mistreats his neighbor, let the same treatment be done to him: wound for wound, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: whatever he has done to others, let it be done to him." Deut. 19:19-21 prescribes to the judges: "You shall do to him (the false accuser) what he plotted to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from your midst, and the rest, hearing of it, shall be afraid. You must not let yourself be moved to pity, but you shall demand life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." This is a matter of satisfaction given to the offended party. The offended party tends to give back more. The Mosaic prescription, by limiting vengeance to reciprocity, mitigated its harshness and especially prevented its ever-greater repercussion, such as would have occurred by force of the very ancient Semitic custom of blood vengeance, which involved the whole clan or family of the offended party. Similar prescriptions were had by the Code of Hammurabi (§ 196 ff.) and by the Roman law of the Twelve Tables, from which the name t. comes: "Si membrum rupit... talio esto" (Table VIII). What appears to be a harsh law was therefore originally a mitigation of crude primitive sentiments. Something harsh and immature is also perceptible in the fact that the law of t. does not contemplate the case of willful harm, but only the harm produced, whatever the intention of the person responsible may have been.
There is progress in the fact that the legislation, inspired by the constant norm of re-establishing justice and peace without neglecting to punish guilt, entrusts the execution of t. to the authority; the satisfaction of the private individual is thus replaced by the conception of "so much for so much" as an act of general justice; in practice the distinction between culpable and involuntary injury imposed itself spontaneously. In Hammurabi a further progress is observed: the tendency to replace the execution of t. with pecuniary penalties. In Israel rabbinic jurisprudence also arrived at this (Bábhā' qammā', VIII, 1 ff.), probably as early as the time of Christ, without however abolishing the law.
In proclaiming the Christian law, Jesus invited his followers, out of love, to renounce even the right to compensation (Mt. 5:38-41): as with all the renewals proposed in the Sermon on the Mount, he indicates a norm of religious-moral perfection. Even in this case he does not impose on the public authorities the neglect of the just punishment of wrongdoers, but he inculcates in his individual disciples the new law, leaving his doctrine of charity to permeate civil legislation as well with its gentleness.